URIEL 




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THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS. A Comedy. 

JEANNE D'ARC. A Tragedy. 

SAPPHO AND PHAON. A Tragedy. 

FENRIS, THE WOLF A Tragedy. 

A GARLAND TO SYLVIA. A Dramatic Reverie. 

THE SCARECROW. A Tragedy of the Ludicrous. 

YANKEE FANTASIES. Five One-Act Plays. 

MATER. An American Study in Comedy. 

ANTI-MATRIMONY. A Satirical Comedy. 

TO-MORROW. A Play in Three Acts. 

POEMS. 

URIEL, AND OTHER POEMS. 

LINCOLN : A Centenary Ode. 

THE PLAYHOUSE AND THE PLAY. Essays. 

THE CIVIC THEATRE. Essays. 

At all Book-Shops 



URIEL 

AND OTHER POEMS 



URIEL 



AND OTHER POEMS 



Percy MacKaye 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1912 



PREFATORY NOTE 

For this volume the author has selected, from poems 
written chiefly during the last two years, such only as are 
commemorative in their nature. Since most of these are 
concerned with persons or events of public interest, the 
following brief references to some of their special occa- 
sions are placed here in lieu of footnotes. 

Uriel: William Vaughn Moody, poet and dramatist, 
died October 17, 19 10. This poem was written about a 
year later. Shortly before his death, he told a friend about 
a new drama, on the theme of Saint Paul, the outlines of 
which had come to him splendidly as a vision. To this 
the sixth stanza of Uriel refers symbolically. 

The Sibyl: In 1912 was published The Art of the The- 
atre, by Edward Gordon Craig. The volume is significant 
of a new era in the art involved. 

The Return of Ellen Terry : Read by the author in the 
Hudson Theatre, New York, November 3, 19 10, upon 
the return of Miss Terry to America, for her series of In- 
terpretive Readings " The Heroines of Shakespeare." 

Peary at the Pole : Read by the author in the Metro- 
politan Opera House, New York, February 8, 19 10, at 
the National Testimonial to Robert E. Peary, on his 
return from the North Pole. 



viii PREFATORY NOTE 

To the Fire-Bringer : On the death of the author of 
The Fire-Bringer, the body of the poet was cremated, 
October, 19 10. These verses were written at the time. 

The Trees of Harvard : Stanzas read at the Dedication 
(on Commencement Day, 1912) of a red-oak sapling, 
chosen by the Harvard Class of Eighteen Ninety-Seven 
from among those then planted to supersede the dead 
elms in the College Yard, at Cambridge. 

Invocation: Written for a Symposium of tributes by 
American poets to the memory of Robert Browning, gath- 
ered by Mr. William Stanley Braithwaite, and published 
in the Boston Transcript, May 4, 191 2. 

The Bard of Bouillabaisse : Stanzas written for the 
Centenary of the birth of Thackeray. Read in the Sixty- 
Ninth Regiment Armory, New York, January 30, 19 12, 
by Mr. Ben Greet, at the Centenary Festival held by the 
Southern Industrial Educational Society, at which bouilla- 
baisse — the dish celebrated by Thackeray in his ballad 
— was served to the public. 

The Candle in the Choir : Read by the author in the 
Congregational meeting-house at Old Rockingham, Ver- 
mont, August 4, 191 2, on the occasion of the Annual 
Pilgrimage. The incident narrated is historic. 

In the Bohemian Redwoods : Written at San Rio, Cal- 
ifornia, in the Redwood Grove of the Bohemian Club of 
San Francisco, on the festival of the Thirty-Third Mid- 



PREFATORY NOTE ix 

summer High Jinks and the performance of the Grove 
Play, August 6, 1910. 

Browning to Ben Ezra : Read by the author before the 
Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, at the Robert 
Browning Centennial Meeting, May 7, 191 2. 

Ninety-Seven : Read by the author at the Decennial 
Celebration of the Harvard Class of Eighteen Ninety- 
Seven, at the Hotel Vendome, Boston, June 24, 1907. 

To the Editors of the North American Review, The 
Mask (Florence, Italy), the Century Magazine, the Boston 
Transcript, The Outlook, Scribner* s Magazine, The Church- 
man, the Poetry Review (London), the Harvard Gradu- 
ates' Magazine, the writer makes his acknowledgments in 
reprinting poems which have appeared in those journals. 

Cornish, New Hampshire 
October, 191 2. 



CONTENTS 



Uriel : To William Vaughn Moody 

The Sibyl : To Edward Gordon Craig 

The Return of Ellen Terry 

Peary at the Pole .... 

To the Fire-Bringer: William Vaughn Moody 

The Trees of Harvard 

Invocation: Robert Browning 

The Bard of Bouillabaisse : Thackeray 

The Automobile ..... 

The Candle in the Choir . 

In the Bohemian Redwoods 

Browning to Ben Ezra 

Ninety-Seven : A Decennial Greeting 



14 
18 

J 9 
2 3 
25 
28 

3° 
33 

34 
40 

41 
55 



URIEL 

STANZAS TO THE MEMORY OF 
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

I 

Uriel, you that in the ageless sun 

Sit in the awful silences of light, 

Singing of vision hid from human sight, — 

Prometheus, beautiful rebellious one ! 

And you, Deucalion, 

For whose blind seed was brought the illuming spark, 

Are you not gathered, now his day is done, 

Beside the brink of that relentless dark — 

The dark where your dear singer's ghost is gone ? 

ii 

Imagined beings, who majestic blend 

Your forms with beauty ! — questing, unconfined, 

The mind conceived you, though the quenched mind 

Goes down in dark where you in dawn ascend. 

Our songs can but suspend 

The ultimate silence : yet could song aspire 

The realms of mortal music to extend 

And wake a Sibyl's voice or Seraph's lyre — 

How should it tell the dearness of a friend ? 



URIEL 

in 

The simplest is the inexpressible; 

The heart of music still evades the Muse, 

And arts of men the heart of man suffuse, 

And saddest things are made of silence still. 

In vain the senses thrill 

To give our sorrows glorious relief 

In pyre of verse and pageants volatile, 

And I, in vain, to speak for him my grief 

Whose spirit of fire invokes my waiting will. 

IV 

To him the best of friendship needs must be 
Uttered no more ; yet was he so endowed 
That Poetry because of him is proud 
And he more noble for his poetry, 
Wherefore infallibly 

I obey the strong compulsion which this verse 
Lays on my lips with strange austerity — 
Now that his voice is silent — to rehearse 
For my own heart how he was dear to me. 



Not by your gradual sands, elusive Time, 
We measure your gray sea, that never rests : 
The bleeding hour-glasses in our breasts 



URIEL 3 

Mete with quick pangs the ebbing of our prime, 

And drip — like sudden rime 

In March, that melts to runnels from a pane 

The south breathes on — oblivion of sublime 

Crystallizations, and the ruthless wane 

Of glittering stars, that scarce had range to climb. 

VI 

Darkling those constellations of his soul 

Glimmered, while racks of stellar lightnings shot 

The white, creative meteors of thought 

Through that last night, where — clad in cloudy stole — 

Beside his ebbing shoal 

Of lifeblood, stood Saint Paul, blazing a theme 

Of living drama from a fiery scroll 

Across his stretched vision as in dream — 

When Death, with blind dark, blotted out the whole. 

VII 

And yet not all : though darkly alien 

Those uncompleted worlds of work to be 

Are waned; still, touched by them, the memory 

Gives afterglow ; and now that comes again 

The mellow season when 

Our eyes last met, his kindling currents run 

Quickening within me gladness and new ken 



URIEL 

Of life, that I have shared his prime with one 
Who wrought large-minded for the love of men. 

VIII 

But not alone to share that large estate 

Of work and interchange of communings — 

The little human paths to heavenly things 

Were also ours: the casual, intimate 

Vistas, which consecrate — 

With laughter and quick tears — the dusty noon 

Of days, and by moist beams irradiate 

Our plodding minds with courage, and attune 

The fellowship that bites its thumb at fate. 

IX 

Where art thou now, mine host Guffanti ? — where 

The iridescence of thy motley troop ! 

Ah, where the merry, animated group 

That snuggled elbows for an extra chair, 

When space was none to spare, 

To pour the votive Chianti, for a toast 

To dramas dark and lyrics debonair, 

The while, to Bella Napoli, mine host 

Exhaled his Parmazan, Parnassan air ! 

x 

Thy Parmazan, immortal laird of ease, 
Can never mold, thy caviare is blest, 



URIEL 

While still our glowing Uriel greets the rest 

Around thy royal board of memories, 

Where sit, the salt of these, 

He of the laughter of a Hundred Lights, 

Blithe Eldorado of high poesies, 

And he — of enigmatic, gentle knights 

The kindly keen — who sings of Calverlys. 

XI 

Because he never wore his sentient heart 
For crows and jays to peck, ofttimes to such 
He seemed a silent fellow, who o'ermuch 
Held from the general gossip-ground apart, 
Or tersely spoke, and tart : 
How should they guess what eagle tore, within, 
His quick of sympathy for humblest smart 
Of human wretchedness, or probed his spleen 
Of scorn against the hypocritic mart ! 

XII 

Sometimes insufferable seemed to come 

That wrath of sympathy : One windy night, 

We watched through squalid panes, forlornly white, 

Amid immense machines' incessant hum — 

Frail figures, gaunt and dumb, 

Of overlabored girls and children, bowed 



URIEL 



Above their slavish toil : " O God ! — A bomb, 
A bomb ! " he cried, " and with one fiery cloud 
Expunge the horrible Caesars of this slum ! " 



XIII 



Another night dreams on the Cornish hills : 

Trembling within the low moon's pallid fires, 

The tall corn-tassels lift their fragrant spires; 

From filmy spheres, a liquid starlight fills — 

Like dew of daffodils — 

The fragile dark, where multitudinous 

The rhythmic, intermittent silence thrills, 

Like song, the valleys. — " Hark ! " he murmurs, " Thus 

May bards from crickets learn their canticles ! " 



XIV 



Now Morning, not less lavish of her sweets, 

Leads us along the woodpaths — in whose hush 

The quivering alchemy of the pure thrush 

Cools from above the balsam-dripping heats — 

To find, in green retreats, 

'Mid men of clay, the great, quick-hearted man 

Whose subtle art our human age secretes, 

Or him whose Wush, tinct with cerulean, 

Blooms with soft castle-towers and cloud-capped fleets. 



URIEL 

xv 
Still to the sorcery of August skies 
In frilled crimson flaunt the hollyhocks, 
Where, lithely poised along the garden walks, 
His little maid enamoured blithe outvies 
The dipping butterflies 

In motion — ah, in grace how grown the while, 
Since he was wont to render to her eyes 
His knightly court, or touch with flitting smile 
Her father's heart by his true flatteries ! 

XVI 

But summer's golden pastures boast no trail 

So splendid as our fretted snowshoes blaze 

Where, sharp across the amethystine ways, 

Iron Ascutney looms in azure mail, 

And, like a frozen grail, 

The frore sun sets, intolerably fair ; 

Mute, in our homebound snow-tracks, we exhale 

The silvery cold, and soon — where bright logs flare 

Talk the long indoor hours, till embers fail. 

XVII 

Ah, with the smoke what smouldering desires 
Waft to the starlight up the swirling flue ! — 
Thoughts that may never, as the swallows do, 



URIEL 

Nest circling homeward to their native fires ! 
Ardors the soul suspires 

The extinct stars drink with the dreamer's breath ; 
The morning-song of Eden's early choirs 
Grows dim with Adam ; close at the ear of death 
Relentless angels tune our earthly lyres ! 

XVIII 

Let it be so : More sweet it is to be 

A listener of love's ephemeral song, 

And live with beauty though it be not long, 

And die enamoured of eternity, 

Though in the apogee 

Of time there sit no individual 

Godhead of life, than to reject the plea 

Of passionate beauty : loveliness is all, 

And love is more divine than memory ; 

XIX 

And love of beauty is the abiding part 

Of friendship : by its hallowed beams we char 

Away all dead and gross familiar 

Disguise, and lay revealed truth's living heart — 

The spirit's counterpart, 

Which was in him a flaming Uriel 

Obscured by chaining flesh, but freed by art 



URIEL 

And by the handclasp that his friends knew well, 
To make from time the imprisoned splendors start. 

xx 

The splendors start again from common things 

At thought of quiet hours of fellowship, 

When his shy fancy, like an elfin ship, 

On foam of pipe-smoke spread elusive wings, 

While subdued carollings 

Of viewless fervors followed in her wake, 

Till, with swift tack and rhythmic sweep of strings, 

She flew before his darkening thought, and strake 

On reefs that rolled with solemn thunderings. 

XXI 

The simple and the mighty themes, that keep 

Friendship robust and taut the mental tether % 

Of these we talked in casual ways together, 

Delighting in the shallow and the deep : 

Nature, quick or asleep, 

And poetry, the fool's anathema, 

Plays, and the magic house where passions weep 

Or laugh at their own image, America 

Our gallant country, and her captainship. 

XXII 

But special-privileged investitures 

Of beauty liked him not. To him the fact 



io URIEL 

Was by its passion only made compact 

Of beauty ; as, amid the Gloucester moors, 

The loveliness, which lures 

The artist's eye, for him was nature's prism 

To illume his love of country : art which endures 

At once is poetry and patriotism, 

In spite of jingoists and epicures. 

XXIII 

So, since his soul contemned thoughts which suborn 

Glory from theft, where he stood, unafraid, 

" Before the solemn bronze Saint-Gaudens made," 

It was his consecration to be torn 

Between swift grief and scorn 

For the island pillage of our Myrmidons, 

And there alone, alone of the high born, 

He spoke, as the great sculptor spoke in bronze, 

From love, whose worth can never be outworn. 

XXIV 

Long may we heed his voice, though he be mute 

As the wan stars to instigate us more ! 

Long shall we need his voice, in the gross war 

Of civic pillagers whose hands pollute 

Our country, and confute 

The oaths of freedom ! Long his passionate art 



URIEL ii 

Let serve the people's temple, to transmute 
The impotence of artists, and impart 
Strength to the fair, joy to the resolute ! 

xxv 

The joy of that large faith American 

In the high will which turns the human tide 

He blazed across the sun-crowned Great Divide 

To make in art a new meridian, 

Stretching the puny span 

Of our pent theatre's roof, to arch a flood 

Of mightier passion cosmopolitan 

And build, in nobler urgings of our blood, 

The excellent democracy of man. 

XXVI 

Nor less he probed the covert cosmical 
Yearnings which glorify the spirit's sleep, 
Where dumb Michaelis, 'mid his grazing sheep, 
Stared on the awful Presence Spiritual, 
And heard the mystic call 
Of the clear Christ across the desert waste 
Lifting from life and death the numbing pall, 
Subtly for all the anguished and disgraced 
Cleansing the mind with breath medicinal. 



iz URIEL 

XXVII 

These were the virile omens of his prime 

(Unmellowed still, he deemed them, but enough 

To give his ardor tang for lordlier stuff), 

But these, when from the clear noon of his clime 

He sank — to solemn chime 

Of stars — in twilight down, the petty grigs 

That pipe around the marshes of the mime, 

Parched niggards of negation, rasped with jigs 

Of glee — to perish in the frost of time. 

XXVIII 

To her who, 'mid his starry litany, 
Muffled their niggling jargon from his ears 
For quiet music of familiar spheres, 
Soothing the dark inevitability 
With springs of courage, be 
Her own strong soul her sentinel : the flame 
That leaps in praise dies in my monody. 
Beauty with service hallows her own fame : 
A living greatness asks no elegy. — 

XXIX 

Uriel, you of light and vision guard ! 

Uriel, you who with his fiery being 

Are blended in my vision's far foreseeing, 



URIEL 

That by one name I hail you — friend and bard! 

Our battling age is starred 

With portents of your presence, till the years, 

Urged by your voice, besiege time's evil-scarred 

Ruin with sounds of singing pioneers, 

Whose onward wills, like wings that slip the shard, 

XXX 

Sweep to the future! What the mind adores 

The will of man shall conquer: what his fate 

Denies, his courage still shall consummate ! 

And as Imagination, rising, soars — 

Scattering her viewless spores 

Of beauty on the tempest — Uriel, 

You gaze with her where the blind gloaming roars, 

Or murmur, where she sits, with fervent shell, 

Rapt in the solitudes of fiery shores. 



!3 



THE SIBYL 

TO EDWARD GORDON CRAIG 

UPON THE PUBLICATION OF HIS VOLUME 
"OX THE ART OF THE THEATRE" 

Cloudy, vast, the caverned stage 

Glows with twilight — Where are they: 

Ribald love, and conscious rage, 

Jovless banter, captious quibble, 

Brass and bauble of Broadway? 

What are such to her — the Sibyl, 

Where she dreams beside her solemn 

Single column 

In the quiet ? — 

Bats in swoon, 

Gnats in riot, 

Midgets swarming 'gainst the moon : 

Such are they 

Beneath the grace 

And the rapture of her face. 

She will waken. Long she's slumbered 
Through the noisy years unnumbered, 
Since her radiant limbs withdrew — 



THE SIBYL 15 



Swift, adept, 

Divinely calm — 

From the leering satyrs' view 

To the visioned silences 

Where she slept, 

Pillowed in her bended arm 

On the starred Acropolis. 

She has wakened! She has smiled 

With a tender, large delight 

At the spell-charms of her child, 

Her own spirit's acolyte. 

At his wand-touch she has risen 

In the mind of man — her prison 

And her temple. Lo, she moves ! 

Sensuous, with form of fable, 

Most divinely reasonable, 

Not the comets through the ether, 

Not the planets in their grooves 

Tread a more harmonious measure 

Than she paces, in her pleasure, 

On the silences beneath her. 

For the silences are thrumming 
As with heart beats at her coming, 
And the Passions pause aghast 



16 THE SIBYL 



At the glorious decision 

Of her movements, as they mark 

Wild vivaces of her vision, 

Deep andantes of her dark ; 

And her gestures — as she lifts 

Pillared vistas of the past, 

Spacious visions of the marches 

Of To-morrow, gracious arches 

Through whose rifts 

Beauty beckons — hold no mirror 

To the error 

And the grossness of the age, 

Mimic not 

Whims and gropings of emotion, 

Atrophies and tricks of thought, 

But her rapture is the rage 

Of man's spirit in its fullness 

Purged of accident and dullness ; 

And her music, born of motion, 

Recreates the spirit's trance, 

Weaving symphonies of sunlight, 

Waking chorals from the wan light 

Of the Pleiads in their dance. 

Through her cloudy, caverned stage 
Bursts the morning: And she stands 



THE SIBYL 17 



In the quiet, by her solemn 

Shining column, 

Gazing forth, serenely glad, 

On the roaring dazzled lands, 

Where the little children, clad 

In the garments of her spirit, 

On enchanted feet come streaming, 

For she knows they shall inherit 

All the ages of her dreaming. 

Then the sated ones and blinded, 
And the timid, callous minded, 
Clutch the children's sleeves, and stare, 
Crying: "What behold you there? 
There is nothing ! " But the lover, 
And the young of soul, his friend, 
And the artist, follow after 
The children in their laughter, 
And the daring half discover, 
And the happy comprehend. 



THE RETURN OF ELLEN TERRY 

How shall we welcome back her image bright 
Who from our hearts has never been away ? 
They never lived who never loved to play, 
Nor ever loved who loved not in delight. 
Therefore to her who, in Dull Care's despite, 
Long since has taught the world's sad soul to pray 
To saints of joy, we bring an homage gay 
Of hearts made lighter by her own pure light. 

Juliet of love, Miranda of the mind, 
Katherine of quips, and beauty's Rosalind, 
Truth's Portia, Beatrice the madcap-merry, 
All heroines wrought of the master's heart — 
To these we bow, and these bow down to Art, 
And Art to Time, and Time — to Ellen Terry. 



PEARY AT THE POLE 
i 

Divinely curious 

Child of the stars is man ; 
And the wonder that beckons us 

Is a child's, since the world began : 
For the fire that keeps us purged and free 
From the sloth of the beast and his sluggardy 
Is kindled of curiosity. 

ii 

Beckoned the polar star — 

And the world child wandered forth : 
The aurora blazed afar 

Onward in to the north ; 
And the awful lure, enticing us 
Long ere the tales of Tacitus, 
Wrought with a splendor ruinous. 

in 

The Arctic ages dashed 

Spindrift on wreck and spar, 
Till a Yankee viking lashed 

His prow to the ominous star; 



2o PEARYATTHEPOLE 



And, blent with breed of the States, he manned 
His ship with the sinew and the sand 
And the sea-glad soul of Newfoundland. 

IV 

Freighted were cabin and hold 

With pemmican, sea-gear and pelt : 

Skyward the loud cheers rolled, 
Seaward — the Roosevelt, 

And northward beyond Manhattan Bay 

They sank to the silences far away 

In the sunlit night and the star-strewn day. 

v 
O silence is a thing 

More beautiful than song 
When the paths of the silent ring 

With the valor of the strong : 
O silent the clifFs of blood-bright snow, 
The boreal flush, the emerald floe, 
Where they sailed — the earls of the Esquimaux ! 

VI 

Forth from the glacial coasts 

They strode with their dogs and furs, 

And their shadows were the ghosts 
Of old adventurers; 



PEARY AT THE POLE 21 

For the harrowed dead rose numb from the night 
And followed their path by the igloo's light 
Through storm and the smothering infinite. 

VII 

Silent, and one by one, 

Southward the forms turned back, 
But one, who walked alone, 

Held still his starry track, 
Till the vast sun circled the ocean's sill, 
And the luring star in the void stood still, 
And the mind of man had wrought his will. 

VIII 

From the Arctic's blindfold eye, 

From the iris of the world, 
He tore the mystery 

Where a planet's dream lay furled ; 
And the planet's vision and his were one, 
For the doer had dreamed and the dreamer had done 
What the wondering world-child had begun. 

IX 

How may the singer reveal 

Truth from the toiler wrung ? 
Or how shall the sinew of steel 

And the heart of gold be sung ? 



22 PEARY AT THE POLE 



Who saith unto Caesar : He conquered: He saw ? 
Weak, weak is word-tribute ; yet mighty is awe 
That renders its homage, where truth is law. 

x 

To Peary of the Pole 

To the vigilant and wary 
Undeviating soul, 

Viking and visionary — 
Hail, in honor's meridian : 
Hail, and honor American 
To the triumph of manhood and a man ! 



TO THE FIRE-BRINGER 

(WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY) 

Bringer of fire 
Down from the star 
Quivering far 
In quiet eternal : 
Bringer of fire ! — 
Ashes we are 
If to thy pyre 
Out of our hearts 
Ashes we bring. 

Vernal, vernal, 

Divine and burning — 

A wreath of worlds 

And wings — was thy vision : 

Fadeless now, 

That fiery wreath 

Wrought of thy yearning 

We lay in death 

Bright on thy brow. 



24 TO THE FIRE -B RINGER 

Singer and lover, 

Brother and friend, 

Ashes can end 

Only the dross of thee : 

Quick, Promethean, 

Out of the dirge 

And the dark loss of thee, 

Leaps thy star-wrestling 

Spirit in paean ! 

Fire, fire, 

Fire was thy bringing, 
An urn elemental 
Of burning song 
So on thy pyre 
We leave it flaming — 
Where Death cannot follow — 
Toward thee, who earnest singing 
" Apollo, Apollo ! " 



THE TREES OF HARVARD 



Religion is the shadow of a tree 

Cast by a star upon the soul of man 
Tingeing its substance with solemnity, 

For under mystic boughs the soul began 

Its progress from the primal Caliban 
Toward reason, and the beauty yet to be. 
Therefore perchance it is 

That in trees we treasure 
Our own tranquillities, 

Making them the measure 
Of our own growth — our griefs and ecstasies. 

ii 

Dear stricken elms of Harvard, while even thus 

Now with your wounds we bleed, still, still it seems 

Your vanished verdure — multitudinous 

With twinkling dryads of our boyish dreams, 
With orioles of song, and golden gleams 

Of youth — abides, a quickening part of us : 



26 THE TREES OF HARVARD 

Abides, as though it would 

By some spell enchanted 
Disperse this tragic mood, 

By your fate implanted, 
To share with you a secret brotherhood. 

in 

Your branches die, but not the dreams they bred : 
They, like immortal choirs of dawn, displace 

Your silent ruin with the singing dead. 

Still in your shadowed walks, with shadowy pace, 
The Concord poet lifts his star-pale face, 

The Elmwood statesman holds his lyric tread. 

Still through your silences 
Float the far Hosannas 

Of that undaunted press, 

Brave with tattered banners, 

Filing from Lexington to the Wilderness. 

IV 

Yes, dreams abide ; yet fungus will infect 
The living tissue and the limb will fall : 

Alike in soaring elm and intellect 

The cankering worm will bore, and spin the pall 
Of aspiration ; yet if this were all 

Our world of dreams had long ago been wrecked. 



THE TREES OF HARVARD 27 

It is not all : for growth, 

Plying deep substitution, 
Outwears decay and sloth, 

While, with sure revolution, 
Youth conquers age, and life o'erlords them both. 



Then life, give way for life ! Old elms forlorn, 

The scion oaks supplant you, and you die ; 
Shorn are your locks of golden days — all shorn 

(Save in our dreams) of glory — so, good-bye! 

But hail, strong-limbed in young integrity, 
Hail, glory of our Harvard boys unborn ! 
Death is a churlish thing ; 

Life, life alone is royal ! 
Red oak, red oak, we bring 

Hearts alive, hearts loyal : 
The king is dead : Long live our crimson king ! 



INVOCATION 

ROBERT BROWNING: J MAY 10,12 

I 
Poet of the vast potential, 
Curious-minded, quintessential 
Prober of passion, ample-hearted 
Lover of lovers, virile-arted 
Robert Browning, plotter of plays, 
Leaven us in these latter days ! 

Now in rebirth, 

Renewing time's festa, 
Spring — the wild quester — 

Quickens the earth. 

II 

Not mere being, but becoming 
Makes us vital. Stript from numbing 
Vestiture of self-complacence 
Naked for our soul's renascence, 
Robert Browning, riddler of hearts, 
Pierce us with your singing darts ! 



INVOCATION 29 

Sharp through the sod, 

Flower-tipped for His aiming. 
Shoot now the flaming 

Spear-heads of God. 

ill 

Not our prayer-stool, but our passion 
Makes us holy. Thus to fashion 
Psalm and Credo to a human 
Ritual of Man and Woman, 
Robert Browning, purger of souls, 
Heap on us your passion-coals ! 

So let aspire — 

As now this young season — 

Spirit and reason 
In flower and fire ! 



THE BARD OF BOUILLABAISSE 

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 1 8 JULY I9II 

I 

Old guests are gone ; old friends have faltered — 

Passed to forgetfulness or fame ; 
Time's little inn remains unaltered, 

The bill of fare is still the same ; 
And still within his cherished corner 

He keeps his " old, accustomed place" — 
Our brother, cynic, lover, scorner, 

Beloved bard of Bouillabaisse. 

11 

The grizzled face has grown no older ; 

A hundred years, they bring no scars, 
Pensive, he turns his shadowy shoulder 

To snuff the candles — of the stars, 
Where generations, eager hearted, 

Throng newly round his storied chair, 
And Monsieur Terre, long departed, 

Leaves in his stead — Madame la Terre. 



THE BARD OF BOUILLABAISSE 31 

in 

Madame la Terre plays now the hostess 

And decks his place for holiday, 
Where his imperishable ghost is 

The guest to whom she bears her tray. 
That he may friendly smile upon her, 

She curtsies to the shadowed face : 
What may she serve to do him honor ? 

Behold — a bowl of Bouillabaisse ! 

IV 

" A hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes," 

(Such is his ballad recipe :) 
" This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is : " 

Hotchpotch of all sorts — such as we ! 
Souls with the garlic and the pepper, 

A sort of savory broth or paste 
Of lover, liar, hero, leper : 

He taught us — for ourselves the taste ! 



For lo, now, to his festa who comes ! — 
Where Beatrix shines down the stair 

Through crowded Crawleys, Esmonds, Newcomes, 
While Becky, purring in her lair, 



32 THE BARD OF BOUILLABAISSE 

Sits tangling the besotted Sedley 

To bumptious Gumbo's black grimace — 

A mordant, brilliant, bubbling medley 
To mix his bowl of Bouillabaisse ! 

VI 

His recipe remains the human : 

Hotchpotch of passions, pruderies, 
Lusts, raptures, loves of man and woman, 

Old vanity of vanities 
Redeemed in visions of the poet 

Who learns from anguish all his arts : 
His bowl, Madame la Terre, bestow it ! 

The bowl is brimming — with our hearts. 



THE AUTOMOBILE 

A FIRST RIDE 1904 

Fluid the world flowed under us : the hills 
Billow on billow of umbrageous green 
Heaved us, aghast, to fresh horizons, seen 

One rapturous instant, blind with flash of rills 

And silver-rising storms and dewy stills 
Of dripping boulders, till the dim ravine 
Drowned us again in leafage, whose serene 

Coverts grew loud with our tumultuous wills. 

Then all of Nature's old amazement seemed 

Sudden to ask us : " Is this also Man ? 

This plunging, volant land-amphibian 
What Plato mused and Paracelsus dreamed ? 

Reply ! " And piercing us with ancient scan, 
The shrill, primeval hawk gazed down — and screamed. 



THE CANDLE IN THE CHOIR 



In Rockingham upon the hill 
The meeting-house shines lone and still: 
A bare, star-cleaving gable-peak, 
Broad roof beamed, snow-ribbed, stark and bleak, 
As long ago their needs sufficed 
Who came from cottage fires to Christ, 
Sharing with frosty breath 
Their foot-stoves and their faith. 

ii 

In Rockingham above the hill 
The stars are few, the winds are shrill; 
And pale as little clouds, the prayers 
Pulse upward round the pulpit stairs, 
Where silent deacons upright sit 
Among the gusty shadows, that flit 

From hands upholding higher 

Faint candles in the choir. 

in 

Seven candles make a shining dim 

To mark the psalm and find the hymn; 



THE CANDLE IN THE CHOIR 35 

Seven candles from the choir-rail throw 
Their blessing on the pews below ; 
Seven candles make a glimmering heaven 
Of righteousness, but one of seven 

Shines in the hand of her: 

Elvira Pulsifer. 

IV 

High on its place of holy fire 

The towered pulpit fronts the choir, 

From whence the pastor's hand may strow 

The penfolds of his flock below, 

Or sign, from under level brows, 

Toward them — the seven of his house 

Who sing with one accord 

The service of the Lord. 



Gaunt looms the shepherd in his gown : 

" O Lord, Lord God, who lookest down 

Serene from Sinai's dazzling height 

On deeps of everlasting night — 

Deeps where Thy scorching ire hath streamed 

Like lava on the unredeemed — 

Be merciful to her, 

Elvira Pulsifer ! 



36 THE CANDLE IN THE CHOIR 

VI 

" Thou art our Father, Lord, Lord God ! 

And they who kiss Thy shining rod 

And break Thy bread and keep Thy tryst — 

They walk this bitter world with Christ; 

All else with dire Apollyon dwell. — 

O save her tender soul from Hell, 

And with Thy Pity stir 

Elvira Pulsifer! 

VII 

" Brethren, the thirty-second psalm! 
And let your solemn voices calm 
The secret fiend from his intent, 
And make a virgin heart repent ! " — 
Thin from the dark the pitch-pipe sounds 
Its note, faint stir the crisping gowns, 
While the dim shepherd there 
Creaks down the frosty stair. 

VIII 

A shrilling sweet of childish throats, 
With sombre bass of elders, floats 
Around him through the raftered room, 
And elvish from the outer gloom 



THE CANDLE IN THE CHOIR 37 

Seven candles on the little panes 
Sway to the choir's subdued refrains, 

As down the aisleway floor 

He seeks the entry door. 

IX 

More faintly now, as if more far, 

He hears them through the door ajar, 

While from the entry, climbing soft, 

He flurries to the choir loft : 

Here to a darkling privacy 

He beckons — so her glance may see — 

God's errant worshipper : 

Elvira Pulsifer. 

x 

Candle and hymnal in her hands, 

She comes to where the shepherd stands — 

Her shepherd who hath labored sore, 

With venerable neighbors more, 

To lead her spirit to the fold 

Where all her kinsfolk came of old : 

All them she loved full well, 

But not — their fear of hell. 

XI 

Anxious they whisper in the aisle 
(The shrilling voices swoon the while 



38 THE CANDLE IN THE CHOIR 

And boom like cymbals in her ears) : 
M Our Lord and Father, child, He hears 
The cry of sin's repentant heart j 
O obdurate, walk not apart 

With one who darkens all, 
But come to Christ His call." 

XII 

" Our Lord He is our Father, yes, 
And He hath come in tenderness 
To me, in hours both bright and dim. 
There is no one at all but Him ; 
And so I cannot walk apart 
Nor cry with a repentant heart, 

Nor heed another's call, 

For God is good to all. 

XIII 

" His wrath it is eternal, child. 
Who fear it not they are defiled. 
They may not sit in choir or pew, 
Defiant, with His chosen few. 
The hymn is ended, now return : 
But nevermore His light to spurn ! " 
Dark, dark, she turns about: 
Her candle — he hath blown out. 



THE CANDLE IN THE CHOIR 39 

XIV 

O elvish from the outer gloom 
Six little flames they leer and loom, 
And elvish on the frosty panes 
Six candles mock the choir's refrains. 
But one all dark, by inward grace 
Shines on unseen, and lights the face 

Of Christ His worshipper : 

Elvira Pulsifer. 



IN THE BOHEMIAN REDWOODS 

Silent above, with seraph eyes 

That peer amid the fronded spars, 

More intimate, more friendly wise, 
More tender glow the eternal stars. 

Lyric beneath, with echoing blast 

Of fellowship Arcadian, 
More cosmic-strange, more pagan-vast, 

More stellar glow the hearts of Man. 

Oracular, aboriginal 

Beyond our dreams, the psychic trees 
Conspire their awful ritual 

Of sempiternal silences ; 

Till solemn now, with lunar state, 
The Druid drama slowly dawns, 

Where cowled satyrs consecrate 
A monastery — of the fauns. 

Lit by dance and starry scroll, 

Aloof, familiar, lone, divine 
With Delphic laughter of the soul, 

The temples of To-morrow shine ! 



BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 

A CENTENARY SOLILOQUY 

I 

A hundred years ! — Hardly I understand : 

Unriddle it, Rabbi. Through the Abbey stones 

Hearken — the hushed and reverent monotones, 

The shuffled feet, that pause! ' Here lie his bones, 

Who passed away 

From earth, perhaps to heaven, 

Aged seventy-seven ; 

Born on this self-same day, 

The seventh May, 

A century gone.' — Look, Rabbi : In my hand 

I hold this little watch they call their world, 

Open it with my thumb, where lo ! each cog, 

Each golden wheel, on star-gemmed axis whirled, 

Pulses with delicate action. — Pray you, jog 

My laggard mind once more ! — They state, you say, 

This was my time-piece : on this crystal face 

I 'd pore, and through dim introspections trace 

The portent of the tickings underneath, 

The mainspring of the action. May be so, 

For you should know, Ben Ezra. All I know 



42 BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 

Is, that the ticks grew fainter, as it slipped 

Under my pillow. Then I fell asleep, 

And have been busy dreaming. That was death, 

They say, — death. Sudden the quick hair-spring skipped 

A turn, trembled, and stopped short. — Much too deep 

For me ! — Somehow I don't conceive the soul 

Like to a watch unwound. Yet now, they say, 

I am a poet who has passed away, 

With many common millions, to a goal 

Unkenned. — Here 's Limbo, then : and I, a shade, 

Soliloquize now, in this cloistral corner, 

Among pale forms of other ghosts forlorner, 

With you, Ben Ezra, whom alive I made 

The Rabbi of my rhyme. — A quaint conceit ! 

Suppose we grant it. So, then ! Let us sit 

On dust of kings and make a rhyme of it 

Together — one dead poet and one rabbi 

Conceived and born of him. While you keep tab, I 

Will muse the elegy, and score our text : 

R. Browning to Ben Ezra, adding next : 

Suggested by the former* s centenary, 

And after that — lest precious ears be vext — 

Apologies for defunct vocabulary. 

ii 

The question I would stress, then, — pray allow — 
Is this : To pass away, is it to cease ? 



BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 43 

But if so, how to cease ? I said just now 
That, since my pillow muffled this time-piece, 
I have been busy dreaming. Ha, those dreams ! 
In what frail shallops, what austere triremes, 
Unchartered cruisers, barks adventuresome, 
I have put forth on unimagined seas 
And sailed — with what courageous companies ! 
Nay, on no phantom ships ! no guest needs fear 
A skinny-handed, ancient mariner 
In me. I entertain with dice of doom 
No spectral crews. My fellow-voyagers were — 
And are, and shall be still — rich-blooded men, 
Rare-hearted women, lovers of this life 
And wrestlers with it, reckless of the strain. 
My visionary barks, those be my books, 
And I, whose bones consort here with the spooks, 
Am admiral there of dreamy argosies, 
That ply 'twixt earth and heaven their perilous mer- 
chandise. 

Perilous, yes ; for dreams are perilous craft, 
When they be manned by fierce doubts, fore and aft, 
Whose mutinous foreheads scan the heaven for signs, 
And menace their commander : c You, who planned 
Our questing voyage, show us the land — your land 
Of God, His promise ! All the lone sea-lines 



44 BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 

Are dim with setting stars, and stark with death ; 

Yet you, who hold the rudder, answer Faith ! 

And, once more, only Faith ! ' Thus curse my crews ! 

I share their hearts but overmaster them, 

And hold the rudder straight ; 

Till now — a star above each plumed stem — 

Lo, where my galleons, guided by their Muse, 

The surging planet circumnavigate, — 

Doubt kindling nobler doubt, faith quelling fate, 

Forms flung to revolution, creeds to rack, 

Old cities of dead empires put to sack, 

Love founding lordlier kingdoms in the future's track ! 

So, Rabbi, to our question, if you please : 

Is sailing thus — to cease? 

The ghosts demur; 

For, in the nudging vault, I hear one say: 

4 Browning, the poet, who has passed away, 

This is his sepulchre.' 

in 

Once a dawn-shaft from God's quiver 
Struck my soul, and from its embers 
Flashed a star of song forever. 
Then the dawn passed. — Who remembers ? 



BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 45 

Not remember Pippa ? — Pippa who, at sun-up, 
Rose in her bare attic, while the east boiled gold ! 
With her rising, see, the morning roses run up 
Clambering live and warm, concealing the night-mold. — 

Pippa, she who sang till little Asolo 
Widened out its walls — like arms, that reach in pity- 
To nestle lonely things, that yearn for love — till, lo, 
Vines of Asolo en wall the heavenly city ! 

Pippa she was Luigi, Ottima was Pippa, 

Mighty Monsignor, chafer, bee and weevil : 

Life redeemed from listlessness, innocence from evil, 

Like the cinder-girl that wore the crystal slipper. 

Well, well, Rabbi, so 

Now, as long ago, 

Even thoughts of Pippa 

Lilt another music, breathe an afterglow. 

What, then ! Will they say 

She, that passed in song, she too has passed away ? 

Trust me : as I used to sit and ponder, 

Songs, songs, songs she sang me, winged of wonder, 

Flitting sunward, till they quite forsook — 

Like happy birds from open pages — 

My black-barred pages. 



46 BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 

But shyly three and four, with slantwise wing, 

Dartled from heaven back, and hovering 

Around mv head, 

Sung my dear earth instead, 

Then nested down, beaks spilling, in my book, 

Splashing its margin with God's meadow-dew. — 

How cage and heart clapped to ! 

When lo, all lamelv, came a scant-winged few 

That fluttered, just outside the closing covers, 

Too late to slip between, and lingered nigh, 

Teasing with matin-tunes the twilit memorv. 

Listen ! — There pipes one, now ! Hark, while it hovers ! 

On passion's flower 
I poised for an hour, 
A little hour long, 
Ere I passed in song. 

Stay ! cried my lover 
Forsaken : Faded 
Are love's endeavor 
And all that made it ! 
Dead — dead! 

But far overhead 
Where faint stars hung, 
And low o'er the grass 



BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 47 

By the eddying river, 

Where poising moon-moths flickered and 

swung, 
I called to my lover 
Over and over : 

I poise, I poise, I poise forever. 
Because I pass. . 

IV 

To poise — to pass away ! 

Rabbi, beyond the high groins, rose and gray, 

Dimmed by the Minster's adumbrated day, 

How, browed in silence, broods my Centenary, 

In silence, bred of dust 

And the dank charnePs must, 

That wraps these bones! — Yes, he is passed away 

Forever more ; nor London's warping mist, 

Nor Italy's keen amethyst 

Shall cast his shadow among men; and soon 

No lingering friend to care, nor old contemporary. — 

He, I mean, whom once they pointed at 

In Rome and Florence : poet-putterer 

Among old pictures, 

Uncouth utterer 

Of obscure strictures, 



48 BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 

Styleless stutterer 

(Quoth his critics, 

Itching with their own enclitics), — 

Paracelsus ! — how he sat 

In chilblain halls, Del Sarto-dippy, 

Robbia-mad, or Lippo Lippi-, 

Like some mage of alchemy, 

Grinding, in his cracked brain-crucibie, 

Tortuous rhymes from radiant Titians, 

Delving for the thence-deducible 

Dialogue-soliloquy : 

Not to mention those musicians ! 

Through the dilettantes' drawl 

At the countess* musicale, 

What surmise you, English ogler, 

Of visions dreamed by old Abt Vogler, 

When you stare (nor note his frowning, 

Conscious of your own silk gowning) 

And pour at tea for Mr. Browning? 

Dust to dust : the large, the little, 

Ashes both ! Who cares a tittle, 

At the teas of Goethe, Horace, 

Who wore satin, or who wore lace ? 

Ashes all ! even such as — Wait ! 

What of him — even him, the speaker, 

Whose spirit, invoked, comes muffled through this weaker 



BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 49 

Organ of an alien poet, 

Pale, yet not all impassionate, 

Sounding subconscious chords that flood and overflow 

it,— 

Of him, my spirit, Rabbi, — what of him, 

My poising soul ? Ah, since I died 

How has this soul of mine been multiplied 

By minds made pregnant with that seraph's fire, 

Whose touch conceptual made aspire 

Mine own from all the ages ! 

Wherefore I deem — 

No individual ghost, 

Moored on some drifting coast, 

Yearning from out the dark for daylight lost, 

For youth's wild torch 

Wind-blown with joyous rages, 

Hope's lifted latch and laughter in the porch, — 

Not even now 

For dear exchange of love's undying vow 

With her that was the Aurora of my life, 

My freed soul longs. For I, that lived, grew old 

And died, am born again in beings manifold, 

By grace of that which, once expressed, 

Bequeathes to them the beautiful, the best, 

That bloomed of me ; 

Whereby immortally 



50 BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 

Their passions now partake 

Of mine, of mine their raptures, their far wonder-quest. 

So, in the spirits I pass through, 
Still I create mv own anew, 
Broadened in scope ; still I awake 
Refreshed, in world-awakened eves 
Of all whom mine with thought imbue; 
Still in mv critics criticize ; 
Till, stretching the thralled spirit's cram?, 
Mv art becomes an Arabian lamp 
That, touched, — behold the genie rise ! 
Who bows his blazing form, and cries : 
c Of all my Master's wealth — the true, 
The beautiful, the strong, the wise, — 
Mortal, what may his servant bring:' 

His:, Rabbi ! — What bird 's that \ — I smell the spring. 
Soft ! — Could it be my silk-girl carolling \ 

Never alone, 

Lover of ioy, 

Delicate scorner 

Of death and his dances, 

Whether vou be 

Girl or bov, 



BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 51 

Rapturous mourner 
Of life and her fancies, 
Never may you, never alone, 
Utter your ecstasy, 
Make your moan. 

Garland your hair : 
Wind, come unwind it ! 
Hide away care : 
Kind heart, come find it ] 

Winter, you gnome, 
Shrunken and shrilly, 
Shut Love in her tomb : 
Tut ! — willy, nilly, 
Love through the loam 
Unlocks with a lily ! 
Starlight or stone, 
Nothing 's its own ! 



Fluent through all flows all, as the Greek saith : 

The drowned stone ripples the starlight, even as death 

The living waters 

With widening discs of light. No sparrow falls 

But gray-stoled choirs revive his matinals 



52 BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 

With incense fresh of dawn. — You, Rabbi, friend, 

Soul-fellow, busy with me to the end, 

Crunching with poet-pestles and rhyme-mortars 

Conundrums for the mind to apprehend, 

Bear witness with me to this paradox: 

What 's permanent must pass. All spirit-shocks, 

Numbness and pain arise 

Conceiving otherwise. 

For Beauty is the flowing of the soul 

Without impediment, the effect being joy; 

So with a ripple may reveal her whole 

Eternal ocean. But the child says : ' See ! 

My earth is stable ; sun and stars spin wild.' 

Not so the man : c Our earth spins dizzily 

Round the fixed sun.' The poet (man and child) 

Peers in the sun, imagining he sees — 

Beyond his face — the shadowy vortices, 

Vast suctions and compulsions of the soul. 

c Beyond the sun,' he sings, 'beyond — our goal 

Is God ! ' Last pries the seer : ' Him whom so far 

Ye seek, yourselves consider what you are 

And find Him : stars aspiring to be, 

Life from itself evolving soul — such He ! 

Time's runner, not Time's stake ; Spring's sap, not sod ; 

Man's orbit, not his planet — such is God. 



BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 53 

Vouch then, Ben Ezra, through the texts we glozed 

Of earth's philosophies, I still opposed 

The fixed, immutable. To slake His thirsty 

You said, there lives our soul's utility — 

His thirst unquenchable, for whom also she, 

My silk-girl, sang: There is no last nor first ! 

Therefore through all 

The chambers of His spirit, as I passed 

In changing roles — to lift the dim tent-flap 

(As David) and behold where hung huge Saul, 

Supine, 

Gigantic, serpentine, 

From the cross-beam; or, through the black storm-gap, 

Panting beneath a woman's hair 

(As Sebald), to watch — now here, now there — 

Blind lightnings stab the dark ; thence to unfold 

Before the quiet eyes of Cleon 

His epos on its burning plates of gold; 

Else watch, in Spring of another eon, 

(Curled like the finger of an infant faun) 

The prying crocus crimson through the lawn, 

Idling, without other care, 

In England, when my April's there; — 

Still it was mine, and «-, in dreams 

To search beyond the world that seems, 



54 BROWNING TO BEN EZRA 

And flash before my fellow men, 

Kindling His image to their ken, 

Glimpses of that God-Man, who wills yet to become, 

Ever for Whom, 

In future as in past, 

There is nor first nor last. 

VI 

But hark! Above our vault, 

Rabbi, the footsteps halt; 

The organ rolls the chant processionary. 

Relinquish here this dust ; 

Accomplish there Time's trust; 

Ascend with me beyond this centenary. 

Go forth, for we are young! 

Time's song is yet unsung; 

Let our glad voices mingle with God's mass. 

You, Rabbi, on my right, 

Before us both — His light : 

Through men's dear world, with Pippa, still I pass ! 



NINETY-SEVEN 

A DECENNIAL GREETING 



After the years, this hour : and after this — the years ! 

Fellows of Ninety-Seven, 

Here *s to the hour that 's given 

Out of the gladness of Time's gold arrears 

For us, once more linking our several spheres, 

To revel and remember. So let be 

Our toast Reunion in our lifted glasses ! 

Yet of the wine each fellow passes 

A glory shall escape his lip 

To wake its magic counterpart 

In the ten-years' vintage of his heart ; 

For Thought is the master of revelry 

Whose common ale of fellowship 

Turns to Moselle in memory. 

And now one thought which makes us what we are 
Masters our hearts anew, where we are met 
On the outer moats of youth, 
And with strange ruth 



56 NINETY-SEVEN 

Compels our vision, with a half-regret, 

Toward those dear days and far 

Of earliest manhood, ere, with souls elate, 

We passed the ivied gate 

To serve our elder liege, the State, 

And paused, with tremulous faces turned, together, 

Back to the Yard, as to our native heather : 

Then plunged in the blind roar and tide of fate. 

ii 

Put by the years — put by ! 

Let as it will the lamp 

Of old Time lour : 

After the years, this hour! 

And after this, the years ! 

For hark ! — above our gay night-camp, 

Out of our common sky, 

Blown from far bleachers by the winds of memory, 

Hark now — the wild, boy cheers 

That set us, lang syne, tingling by the ears : 

Ninety-&v*Ji, Ninety- «SW;<?;z, from near and far, 
"Ninety-Seven, Ninety-Seven, to hail our star — 

Harvard, Harvard ! 
Ninety-Seven, Ninety-Seven, here we are ! 



NINETY-SEVEN 57 

And once more the incense rises by the rush-lined banks 

of Charles 
On the frosty breath of thirty-thousand soul, 
And the side-line watchers scramble as the skein of torses 

snarls 
And a shoulder glides from under — past the goal ! 
And a cataract of crimson pours its wave upon the turf 
And heaves the sweating victors on its throng, 
Where the bleachers rise like headlands from the roar of 

living surf, 
And the breakers of wild boys burst forth in song : 

For it 's Glory, Glory to the Crimson ! 
And hoarse echoes from Harvard's halls ; 
And the ivy overhead is glowing deeper red 
In the twilight of her walls. 

But four years are not Destiny, 

And the ultimate June days pass 
To hail the flower-ensanguined Tree 

Where the hosts of Harvard mass, 
And — banked like iris, sheath on sheath, 

A-quiver with all their curls, 
One mighty, rustling, maiden wreath — 

Our coronal of girls ! 



58 NINETY-SEVEN 

Then it 's on with the fight of flowers, 
And the battle of bouquets ! 

Till the mangled crush of the roses blush 
In the smile of a maiden's praise. 

Soft, then, that glance of smile and tress 

Through murmurous evening glows: 
The lace, the laugh, the loveliness, 

The paper-lamps of rose, 
Are portions of a pageantry 

Made of the music's bars ; 
And now they are a memory, 

A Class-day in the stars ! 

in 

Watched from some clear and starry eminence, 

How calm in plastic beauty dreams the world ! 

Mile after mile through moon-lit silences, 

In fronded slumber furled, 

Murmur the herded forests ; and there is 

No other sound or passion, but a sense 

As if some stellar truce perpetual 

Had healed all life with dews of harmony 

And quietness ; for all 

The nestling foothills and the valleys lie — 

Lapt in the summer moon's unconscious keep — 

Like children, or like lovers, fast asleep. 



NINETY-SEVEN 59 

Fond reverie and illusion ! for beneath 
That gloom-suspended canopy, the moan 
Of the struck stag is stifled ; blind, alone, 
The wood-cat tears his flank; innumerable 
Throughout the dark, seekers of life and death 
Pursue their aimless ends of suffering 
And brief satiety ; claw, tusk and wing 
Torture, waylay, destroy each other : even 
The beak, whose morning-song ineffable 
Shall ravish heaven, 

Strikes at the adder with his own despite, 
And all the pensive wonder of the night 
Is stung with venom of a monstrous hive 
Of hearts insatiable — to survive. 

So 'neath the gaze of early manhood's eye 

Repose the civilizations : derrick and spire, 

Lighthouse and looming shaft and armoury — 

Islanded grandly in the evening air — 

Far-coiling trains spetting the gloom with fire, 

And moving barges in the mist, and fair 

Suspended bridges, lifting unaware 

Beyond the fog-banks — build for one who dreams 

Beautiful self-delusion : Fabulous 

Must be the master-race of such a world ! 

Titan and angel in their stature, thus 

To guide the lightnings that the gods have hurled. 



60 NINETY-SEVEN 

— God ! That this only seems 

And is not ! No, for us 

Who fume and strive beneath the glamour, — we, 

The cannibals of competition, see 

What things we are : what beasts that hunt and flee 

And kill, yet love the life we kill, and breed 

The very progeny whose hearts we bleed. 

What for ? What need ? 

Are we, then, so in awe 

Of our own pain, that we may not create 

Out of our need the thing we thirst for — Joy ? 

Joy is not nature's law 

But man's ; and in the mind of man resides 

For Joy's subservience — 

The angel and the titan, Commonsense ; 

So if there still abides 

In us the primal spark American 

That kindled us in Liberty, a nation, 

Let it leap up and burn a clearer flame, 

As ever and the same 

It still has leaped, since first that fire began, 

At the cry : Emancipation ! 

IV 

Fair is the field where Reason and High Will 
Captain us, and their quickening battle-cry 



NINETY-SEVEN 61 

Is Justice, and the New Democracy ! 
Justice, whose heart-red shield 
Blazons this ultimatum on her field : 
More Happiness 
For all that live, and shall live, and not less. 

The noble fustian of a former age, 

Surviving still, 

Has served its nobler ends ; turn now the page ! 

All men are not born equal : let them be, 

And let them be born better : 

Equal in hope and opportunity, 

Better in altruism and in will 

To execute their clearer wisdom. Let 

The loins of the begetter 

Be passionate for his posterity 

To breed a race more excellent, until 

Our human species shall be perfected 

Beyond the sway of passion, and forget 

That ever time was when it might be said 

(As men have said by San Francisco Bay) : 

Nature is not more cruel than mankind. 

But this is still To-day, 

Our day — not of rebellion or defined 

Outburst, as when our law-schooled fathers broke 



62 NINETY-SEVEN 

The transatlantic yoke, 

Or Lincoln the slave's goad 

Lifted, and struck the intolerable load 

From Freedom's galled shoulders. Not to us 

That outward menace : subtler slavery — 

The inward canker of corruption, cant 

Of predatorial wealth, insidious 

Muffling of the bugle-voiced press, 

Hazard us none the less. 

No more the trumpet's call and stallion's neigh 

Incite us to the action : but instead 

The ticker's steel tattoo, the teller's drone, 

The trip-hammer's iron intermittent clang, the shrill 

Steam-whistle, the huge-heaved and sullen moan 

Of vast machines in vassalage — resound 

Our call to carnage, where no blood is shed, 

But where, from skyward cliffs and underground, 

The living dead — 

Whirled on the spokes of the enormous wheel 

Of Commerce — chant their strident monotone. 



Classmen of Ninety-Seven — Classmates still 

In common conscience for the public weal ! 

Come forth, and let the quenching of world-sorrow 

Kindle our joy ! — Come forth, and make To-morrow 



NINETY-SEVEN 63 

A new Commencement at the gates of Time 

Whence all our deeds shall climb ! 

America, the matrix of the nations, lies 

Fallow before us, and her destinies, 

In nascent grandeur furled, 

Are ours to shape in beauty for our kind. 

Our manhood shines before, but when that shuts behind, 

Still beckons — the young manhood of the world. 



FINIS 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



NOV 13 1912 



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